


we lay here for years or for hours

by swimthewholeriogrande



Series: i'd be home with you [1]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Torture, Whump, yikesssss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 22:25:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18455843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimthewholeriogrande/pseuds/swimthewholeriogrande
Summary: How long has it been?





	we lay here for years or for hours

**Author's Note:**

> Title from In a Week by Hozier
> 
> This is more or less pure whump BUT I did my best to make it also have a quality narrative, and worked really hard on it, so I hope you like it! Please comment, thank you!

He tastes metal in his mouth. He's bitten clean through his tongue.

His eyes flutter and slide open, syrup-slow. There's static in his ears. 

"There we go," he hears her say, "come back up, Jake, there you are."

 _Where?_ he wonders sleepily, but he knows really. The shifting light of the TV slicks Amy's face with colour. Her thumb is pressed to the pulse point of his neck, her hands wet and shaking. 

"Good," he whispers, and loses his eyes and drifts.

-

Somewhere here, there is a horrible sound - that sounds like the echo of a cry of an animal. Amy's eyes feel glued shut. She can't hear the TV anymore.

Jake is nowhere. Jake is perhaps somewhere to her right, where the noise is coming from. Amy pries her eyes open and manages to roll her head, and sees the blurry shape of Jake on his back, someone on him, and he is crying, he is in pain.

She tries to speak and nothing will come. Jake's back arches off the floor; she sees his head strain back, away from the pain, and a lighter clatters to the floor. There is a weeping sore on his neck.

"Stop, stop, stop, stop." Amy can hear him as if from under water. "Stop, stop, stop."

Amy breathes, and is gone.

-

(He thinks it's been months.

It feels like a lifetime.)

Jake opens his eyes. He can see a muted Friends rerun on the TV. The curtains of the living room - so ordinary, which almost makes it worse - are closed tight, and the only light is from the screen.

It illuminates his wife. She's been placed on the sofa, and this time she is the one clearly drugged up to her ears. Jake shuffles over on his knees, hands and ankles still cuffed, and pushes at her arm. "Amy," he rasps, "Amy, wake up." They're alone for the first time he can remember, but he knows it won't last.

Amy sighs and shifts, but doesn't open her eyes. Jake wants to put pressure on the wound on her thigh, bleeding sluggishly, but he can barely move. Instead he just leans his head into her side and swallows hard; he wants to take care of her - he's _supposed_ to take care of her. And instead they're trapped in this surreal suburban hell.

Joey laughs silently on the TV, the saturation making Jake's eyes hurts. There's a fumble at the door, the scrape of padlocks, and _he_ steps into the room.

Jake calls him Gerry, because he would call him Guther like in Die Hard, but he has a decidedly American accent. The second Jake sees him he lets himself go limp, hoping that maybe Gerry will think both of them are asleep.

"Good morning, Peralta." His voice is even, as if there aren't two half-dead people crumpled on his couch. Jake hears him come closer and does his best to stay lax. 

There's a tut. "Naughty," Gerry reprimands, and twists Jake's ear so hard he thinks it's going to come off. Jake jerks and struggles, going with the pain as Gerry tugs him onto the floor, to his elbows and knees, and he loses contact with Amy. Gerry bends down, still twisting viciously, and lifts his chin.

"Don't lie," he says. "Don't pretend." And he lets go.

Jake raises his bound hands to hold his ear, feeling like the side of his head is on fire. He pushes his forehead against Amy's shin, gasping hard, his knees shifting and sliding on the carpet.

"Now.' Gerry pulls something from a shopping bag, something in tinfoil. "I've brought you breakfast."

Jake almost lunges for the food, but then he hesitates. Amy is still in her own sleeping world, but he knows she's hungry, they both always are. "Amy?" he says, a question, and Gerry smiles benevolently.

"I'll leave her some." He hands Jake a sandwich. "What a caring husband."

(He's got some kind of obsession with their marriage, with their love. He delights in seeing them care for each other after he rips them to pieces. Sometimes Jake wonders if that's why all this is happening, but he can't know for sure. He almost doesn't want to.)

Jake wolfs the offering down. He has long since stopped refusing to eat the food - they both tried at the start, but if Gerry wants to drug them he'll do it anyway, and he'd rather risk eating drugged food than getting a needle in his neck. He keeps them both sedated at the very least. Sometimes, like now with Amy, he knocks them out.

"Now," Gerry says, and the world is spinning already, "hold still." And the knife is under Jake's nose, tracing over his cheek and stinging ear, and finally breaking the skin of his jaw - deep and scarring. He tastes it on his lips and spasms involuntarily. There's blood on Amy's bare feet.

"I said _still_!" Gerry roars, and his weight crashes Jake onto his back, the knife driving into the soft muscle of his arm, and Amy sleeps on.

-

Amy knows that she'll die here.

She never knows it more than when Jake is being hurt, because every single time she thinks that the man will finally snap and kill him this time, and she can't live without Jake. Amy knows that she'll die here because if Jake does, so will she. And maybe that would be easier than this.

He clearly senses she's not paying attention. The taser jams into her lower back, harder than before, and Amy seizes, her jaw locking as she lets out a pained grunt. Jake is tied to the radiator across the room; he is straining so hard that she knows the handcuffs are cutting him.

"What did I just say, hm?" the man - Jake calls him Gerry - purrs. She feels the electricity in her eyeballs; the TV murmurs in the corner. "Tell me."

"You said -" Amy blinks and her fingers twitch, itchy-trigger. "You said if I - spoke back again you'd-"

"I'd what?" Gerry prompts, and when Amy doesn't answer fast enough he holds the taser against her neck, a clear warning. Jake let's out a muffled scream from behind his gag.

"You'd - cripple J-Jake." She spits out the words, tongue burning. "You said you'd make it so he never walked again."

"Good girl," Gerry says warmly. He presses the button and the taser goes off like a firework against her throat.

When he finally unties Jake from the heater and leaves them, Amy's muscles are still shaking at random. Jake pulls her against him even though it hurts both of them; he kisses her temple and his lips are dry and bleedingw.

Someone on the TV cackles with laughter. Jake's head drops to her shoulder. "I fucking hate this show," he says. 

-

"How long has it been? How long has it been? How long has it been?"

Jake is straddling Gerry, choking him, shaking him. The other man's face is red and gasping. Jake can barely hear Amy's voice and the TV over the roar in his ears.

He has to know. He has to know. "How long has it been?"

Gerry's foot catches a woumd on Jake's thigh, and when Jake starts in pain he uses it to throw Jake off. Sudden Jake is the one below, flat on his stomach, and Gerry's fist drives savagely into his face. Amy is saying something but he doesn't know what.

Gerry beats him until Jake feels unconsciousness pulling at the threads of his mind. Then the man steps back, breathing hard.

"Don't you ever try that again," Gerry pants. He spits at Amy as he leaves, and somehow that hurts worse than of it did.

-

It's Rosa.

It's Rosa that she sees out of the corner of her eye without warning. It's Rosa's hands that unlock the cuffs that she's sure are burned into her wrists and ankles, Rosa's voice that calls her from a drugged haze.

"Amy." It almost sounds like Rosa is crying, but Rosa never cries. "Amy, it's over, okay? You're okay. We're here."

Amy fights the fog. She tries hard to focus on the other woman's face. It can't be real.

"I'm real," Rosa tells her. She must have spoken aloud. "I'm real. I'm here. We've got you both. Can I lift you, Amy?"

Amy lets her, though she couldn't have stopped her anyway. She sees Terry holding Jake like a child; he and Rosa look awfully bloody, she thinks absentmindedly, and then she supposed ah, that is Jake's blood and that is my blood.

As they are brought out, leaving a dripping trail, someone turns off the TV.

(It has been thirteen months.)


End file.
